1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a parking-assist device which is provided for assisting a driver of an automotive vehicle in performing garage parking, column parking, etc. Moreover, the present invention relates to a reversing-assist device which is provided for assisting the driver of the vehicle in performing the operation to make the course change at a three-pronged road or an intersection with a narrow road width and little traffic.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is often difficult for the beginners to perform garage parking, column parking, etc. Especially, the beginners are often not good at maneuvering the vehicle into the garage. To obviate the problem, a parking-assist device for assisting the operation in the case of parking the vehicle has been created.
For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 11-208420 discloses a parking auxiliary system which may be considered the parking-assist device of the above type.
In the parking auxiliary system, an image of a target parking region from the side of the target parking position is created, and a target parking region which is obtained by the computation is superimposed on the created image, so that the driver of the vehicle is guided to the target parking position.
In the parking auxiliary system disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 11-208420, if the vehicle steps on the curbstone in front of the garage after the vehicle assisting is started, then the vehicle assisting is terminated by the shock etc. regardless of the operator's intention. Thus, if the parking assisting is interrupted regardless of the operator's intention, the operator wishes to resume the execution of the parking assist from the interrupted position in many cases.
However, in the parking auxiliary device disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 11-208420, the vehicle movement route is computed based on only the relative positions of the vehicle where the image of the target parking region from the side thereof is created and the target parking region. If the parking assist is interrupted, the execution of the parking assisting cannot be resumed unless the vehicle is again moved back to the side of the target parking position after stopping, and the time and efforts will become wasteful.
In order to overcome the problem, Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-014794 (which is assigned to the assignee of this application and corresponds to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2003-212073) discloses a parking-assist device. In this parking-assist device, when resuming the parking assist after the parking assist is started and interrupted, the target parking position at the time of resuming is computed based on the target parking position previously set before the parking assist is resumed, and the computed target parking position at the time of resuming is taken as a default display position of the target parking frame at the time of resetting the target parking position, and displayed on the screen of the display unit.
In the above-described parking-assist device, at the time of resetting the target parking position, the computed target parking position is displayed on the screen of the display unit as a default display position of the target parking frame at the time of resetting. It is possible to take the position corresponding to the target parking position or the nearby position as the default display position of the target parking frame. Therefore, it is not necessary to move the target parking frame greatly when setting the target parking position, and the target parking position can be set up easily and the parking assisting can be resumed at an early stage.
Moreover, another conventional parking-assist device is known. In the known parking assist device, the imaginary display indication which indicates the target parking position of the self-vehicle is superimposed on the camera image, and the target-parking-position display indication is moved on the camera image by using the position adjustment unit.
In this case, after the setting of the target parking position is performed, the calculation of the parking route is performed. The automatic parking control is performed using the operator guidance to the driver or the steering/control unit so as to meet the parking route.
However, in the above-mentioned parking-assist devices, the target-parking-position display indication is moved only with the position adjustment unit, and the operation of setting the target parking position is needed for every time of parking, and the operation is troublesome. Thus, the ease of operation deteriorates.